snow – My Surreal Sketchbook of Reality

The Protector – a 100 word story

The last of the Porcupine Caribou waded through the snow. The hunter pushed on, already thinking about the money this stuffed animal would bring him. He could see it in the distance, a brownish white spot on the spot white snow. He just had to get closer, within shooting range. He moved stealthily and quietly until he could almost smell the prey. Suddenly, the reindeer looked up, his eyes intelligent and sad. A shot was heard and the hunter fell dead on the snow. The protector smiled, walked to his beloved pet and gave it a rubbing behind the ear.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 26, Intelligent and Sad

Every once in a while, a feeling of melancholy might fall upon you. This feeling is also known as sadness. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at sadness. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about sadness. Sadness seems to have two main causes. The first one is loss. The other is a discrepancy between you and the world around you that may lead to loneliness and alienation. There might be other reasons for sadness but those seem to be the two main ones. Loss is the absence of someone, an absence that leaves a hole where that special someone used to be. Someone was there and he or she is not there anymore. That someone might be a lover who walked out on you or a child who left home. They might leave you with the hope that they might return or they might be gone for good. In a way, that someone is still there, only not with you anymore. For this reason, such a loss might sometimes be more difficult to accept.

There is another kind of loss, one that is interwoven with the tapestry of the dippest kind of sadness. That loss is the result of the death of a loved one. That kind of loss leaves a hole that can never be filled. That kind of hole is within you for the rest of your life, always there, lurking in the shadows. It is the kind of sadness that is interwoven into your very being. You can learn to live with it, but it never completely disappears. No matter what you do, there will be loss in your life. It’s inevitable. People die or move on, leaving a person-shaped hole where they used to be in your life. I’m going to try and fix this hole here. I’ll be right back.

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Hide – a 100 word story

I want to hide from it. I don’t want to be part of it anymore. I want people to forget my name, forget I ever existed, then, maybe I’ll be free. All the things that have gone wrong, all my mistakes would disappear. So… can you do it? Good. Your plane of existence sounds good to me. So… you say it’s completely empty? Excellent. Now – about the cost. As I understand it, I renounce my connection to reality and sign it up to you. That’s fine with me. I never had much use for it anyway. Where do I sign?

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Welcome back. There is another kind of sadness, one that comes from not being in sync with the people around you. The sadness of the one who is different from the ones around him. The sadness that comes from the loneliness of being a unique human being, from being the unknown in the eyes of those around you. Most people are afraid of the unknown. It’s a fear that comes from ancient times when the unknown could be someone from an opposing tribe, someone that could kill you. If you are different, you are the unknown and people tend to stay away. It’s not a rational fear and it comes from ignorance. It has no place in modern times but it’s our heritage from that ancient past.

In truth, we are all different. We are all unique but sometimes it is difficult for the average person to understand this. Being perceived as different by those around you is really just a product of being in the wrong place. People are still tribal in nature and they like gathering with their own tribe. If you are in the wrong tribe you are perceived as different. It is quite easy to find a tribe that fits you today if you are stuck in the wrong place. This is one of the things the social part of the internet is used for. While finding your tribe in social media might be easier today then it used to be, there is still a problem. The people of your tribe might be scattered throughout the far-out corners of the world and reaching them might not be easy.

An internet-based tribe is no substitute for human touch, human contact. When your tribe is scattered around the world, that contact is missing and in its place, there is sadness. It’s a sadness that cannot always be resolved. You just have to learn to live with your sadness, embrace it as your very own unique brand of sadness. Give your sadness a name, joke with it, have a drink with it, make it your friend. This concludes episode 26 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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Snow – a 100 word story

The snow has been falling, dripping on my heart for days, and it is now frozen. No sound is coming out, no internal clock ticking, clicking the days of my mortal prison away. Gone are the days, chased by time rushing by, washing me away in its clockwork tide, forgotten in a prison of ice. The rain will wash my pain away, leave me clean, cold and still. I’m forever blue, in a crystalized ice cage, here I stay, unmoving, uncaring, for all my cares are gone, forgotten, as I forever sleep, with a frozen heart, buried under deep snow.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 13, Clockwork Tide

Some say that everything that happens is predetermined by cause and effect. Some say it’s all just random events. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at determinism, causation, and randomness. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about randomness versus determinism. First, let’s look at randomness as reflected by chaos geometry which derives from chaos theory. Chaos theory studies the mathematics of randomness. While studying random numbers, it was discovered that those numbers follow the same pattern of many natural occurrences. Many of the natural things that appear random actually have a method within them and that method follows chaos geometry. If you look at the edge of a random shape, let’s say – a cloud, you would see shapes that resemble the shape of the whole cloud, only smaller and not exactly the same, just resembling the whole cloud. That is true for any random thing you would look at, from the shape of a snowflake to the way the weather behaves. Things that appear random seem to hold the seed of themselves. That is the essence of chaos geometry and it suggests that nothing is truly random.

Next, let’s look at cause and effect. When clouds collide it causes a release of an electrical charge, that manifests itself in the form of thunder and lightning. If that electrical charge hits something, let’s say a tree, it can cause the tree to catch on fire. If the tree is close to other trees they can also catch fire and you can get a forest fire. This is called a chain of events. In this chain of events, colliding clouds caused a forest fire. The question is, where do chains of events start and when do they end? You can take the events further and see what happens after the fire is over or go back and see how the clouds were formed in the first place. Events don’t start with one event or finish with another, they are a continuous progression of one event leading to another with lots of side events branching from them. Determinism says that events can only go one way. There is really only one option for the events to unfold. For example, the only thing that can possibly happen now is that I take a break. I’ll be right back.

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The Chair – a 100 word story

“Address the chair,” said the head table. “I beg to differ” uttered the chest of drawers but the cupboard shushed her. The respectable window curtain walked in. An appreciative silence filled the room. A sofa moaned. “I think that sofa ate too much last night” whispered a bed to a cabinet. The cabinet just shrugged and said “that sofa would be very hungry when there is no food left. There is a limited amount of unsuspecting people around you know.” The chair cleared his throat and said: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all furniture are created equal…”

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Welcome back. Determinism tells us that everything has a cause and effect that can only lead one way. You can’t really prevent that forest fire. There is no real choice. If we get all the facts about what causes what we can mathematically calculate all the causes and effects and accurately predict the future. The problem is that we can’t collect all the causes and all the effects. There are just too many of them.

Another question that comes to mind is if everything is really predetermined, do we really make decisions? Is there such a thing as free will? The same way that a forest fire is caused by clouds colliding, our thought process is determined by a combination of what we experience and the structure of our genome. Everything we are is determined by some outside force or by the way we are physically built. If you want to believe in free will, you could say that we can decide what we take in from our environment and what we decide to use to build our self-identity. Even if this is an illusion and we don’t really decide, I believe we should try to become a better version of ourselves. That is because this is who I am. I believe that we should strive to leave the world in a better state then we got it. It doesn’t matter if things are predetermined or not. It is the choices we presume to make that matter, and we should not act as if the world is deterministic. We should embrace the illusion of choice and make a better world for ourselves. This concludes episode 13 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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